Christopher Varelas

Chris Varelas is a founding partner of Riverwood Capital, a private equity firm focused on high growth technology and technology-related companies in need of capital and expertise to scale on a global basis. The firm’s successful investments include ALOG, GoPro, Globant and Nutanix. His personal successful early stage investments include Berkeley Lights, FIGS, Forge and Glam Street.

Prior to establishing Riverwood, Chris worked at Salomon Brothers/Citi as Global Head of Technology, Media & Telecom Investment Banking, Head of Citi’s National Investment Bank, member of Citi’s Global Operating Committee and Culture Czar for all of Citi. As an investment banker, Chris’ primary focus was Mergers & Acquisitions, working on many of the landmark transactions that shaped the technology industry including Compaq/HP, Peoplesoft/Oracle, IBM/PWC, Lucent Fiber and Flextronics/Solectron. In addition, he was the lead team member for the Chapter Nine reorganization of the County of Orange, California. Chris was selected as one of the 100 most important deal makers by the New York Times and was named top “rainmaker’ in the technology sector by Dealmaker Magazine.